PROVIDENCE — The state bus authority, whose legacy business is moving people from one place to another, has spent roughly $7 million across six studies since 2009 to scope a pivot into seating, and in August its board voted 6–0 to enter the design phase.

The product is a climate-controlled, well-lit room beside the train station, on the 4.4 acres that held the World Cup fan zone this summer. Its defining feature is a glass wall. On the far side of the glass, a dedicated busway; on the near side, the customer, seated, watching. The authority's chief executive has compared the concept to an airport. About $77 million is already committed to it.

The pivot follows a difficult year in the core business. In September 2025 the authority cut or reduced 45 of its 63 routes — the largest reduction in its 59-year history — to save about $4.4 million, which is less than three percent of its budget. Ridership fell 12 percent. An advocacy coalition's report found the hourly cost of running a bus rose 29 percent over the same period, so the authority now spends more to carry fewer people, each of them, according to an advocate who addressed the board in August, standing. The buses, he told the board, continue to be packed.

It is this last figure — the standing — that the seating initiative is understood to address. A rider who cannot find a seat on the bus will, under the new model, find one in the building.

The financing selected the strategy as much as the strategy selected the financing. The building draws on a $35 million transit bond voters approved in 2014 — $22 million of it to the authority — and a $25 million federal grant, and officials confirmed at the August meeting that none of that money can lawfully be spent on running buses or restoring the routes cut last fall. The capital could build a room. It could not fill one. The authority elected to build the room.

Pricing for the seating has not been announced. The bus fare has been two dollars since 2010, and the authority is conducting what it calls a fare analysis, which is expected to conclude that it should be more.

The authority's current hub, a downtown plaza it has occupied since the early 1980s, will be retained as a stop. The board's treasurer told the August meeting that the plaza is no longer the hub of the city and no longer works. Critics of the move, including a former board member who asked the board to hold off until it knew how the new hub would affect the routes, argue that most riders who go to the plaza are not changing buses there — they are arriving, because the plaza is where they were going. On this view the customer is not waiting and does not need a seat; the customer is leaving. The authority has conducted a rider survey on where trips begin and end. It has not published the results.

Design and engineering, including bid specifications and cost estimates, are now under way. Construction requires an environmental review and a further vote of the board. The authority has not set a date for the seating to open.

Riders currently seated on a bus are advised that this is not a scheduled product and may be discontinued.